Web services that allow users to maintain information and share it with other users are known. For example, websites created using Microsoft SharePoint allow users to work collaboratively by facilitating sharing of information. In such systems, website accounts may be created for users of the service. A user of the Internet service can utilize a website account to create, edit, and store within the system folders, documents, tasks or other artifact that are associated with the user. Moreover, an owner of an account can grant access to the account to other users, who then can view, depending on the nature of the access granted, edit or store and data on the account.
The web service provides a user interface through which users may create or otherwise access artifacts stored by the system. This interface defines the user experience to the service by controlling the types of functions that users may perform with the service. For example, the interface may allow a user to view word processing documents as formatted text or artifacts representing task entries displayed in a calendar format.
When an account for a user is first created, resources are allocated for the account, including infrastructure that will allow the user create and store data on the account. The resources of a system dedicated to such infrastructure for the service can be significant, particularly if a number of users of the service is large.
The inventors have appreciated that users of an Internet service may differ in their user behavior. Some users actively utilize capabilities of the service by, for example, creating documents to be stored within their account, communicating with other users of the service, and inviting new users. Other users may subscribe to the Internet service only to find out that they are not interested in continuing using the service. Some users may join the service but defer utilizing full capabilities provided by the service to a later time.
Prior art services have lacked an effective means to discriminate among users based on their intent regarding utilizing capabilities of the service. Therefore, in such services, an amount of upfront resources had to be allocated for each user account that did not reflect a user's intent regarding how actively the user wishes to utilize capabilities of the service. Thus, valuable system resources were consumed by accounts for users which never intended to utilize capabilities provided by the resources.